I have tried to implement a persistent data storage with smart contracts as seen with the following code (this is an example that mimics what my actual code does). I have a data storage contract with a mapping of contract addresses to another mapping of more data so that each calling contract can have access to their own set of data, taken from this article https://medium.com/quillhash/how-to-write-upgradable-smart-contracts-in-solidity-d8f1b95a0e9a. Setters can only be set for msg.sender, i.e., the calling contract. Getters can be accessed by anyone, e.g. from "OtherContract" below since he has access to the "UserContract" address. (Side note: I inherit from SharedEvents since I do something similar in my actual code and I include this here just in case this might affect the weird behavior I am seeing.)

pragma solidity ^0.5.0;

contract ExampleDataStorage {

struct UserProfile {
    string username;
    string department;
    uint8 avatarNumber;
    uint40 totalSteps;
    mapping(uint32 => uint32) userStepInfo;
    uint32 lastSyncDate;
}

mapping(address => mapping(address => UserProfile)) _userProfile;

function setAvatarNumber(uint8 _avatarNumber, address _userAddress) public {
    _userProfile[msg.sender][_userAddress].avatarNumber = _avatarNumber;
}

function getAvatarNumber(address _contractAddress, address _userAddress) public view returns(uint8) {
    return _userProfile[_contractAddress][_userAddress].avatarNumber;
}

}

contract SharedEvents {

constructor () public {}

event avatarSet(string _contractName, uint8 _avatar);

}


contract UserContract is SharedEvents {

ExampleDataStorage _storage;
string _contractName = "UserContract";

constructor (address _exampleDataStorageAddress) public payable {
    _storage = ExampleDataStorage(_exampleDataStorageAddress);
}

function _setAvatarNumber(uint8 _newAvatarNumber) public {
    _storage.setAvatarNumber(_newAvatarNumber, msg.sender);
    emit avatarSet(_contractName, _newAvatarNumber);
}

function _getAvatarNumber() public view returns(uint8) {
    return _storage.getAvatarNumber(address(this), msg.sender);
}

}


contract OtherContract is SharedEvents {

ExampleDataStorage _storage;
address _userContractAddress;

constructor (address _exampleDataStorageAddress, address _userContractAddressParam) public payable {
    _storage = ExampleDataStorage(_exampleDataStorageAddress);
    _userContractAddress = _userContractAddressParam;
}

function _getAvatarNumber() public view returns(uint8) {
    return _storage.getAvatarNumber(_userContractAddress, msg.sender);
}

}

Below is the truffle migration code.

module.exports = function(deployer) {
    deployer.deploy(ExampleDataStorage)
    .then(() => {
        return deployer.deploy(UserContract, ExampleDataStorage.address)
    })
    .then(() => {
        return deployer.deploy(OtherContract, ExampleDataStorage.address, UserContract.address)
    })
}

When this is run in remix, everything works fine. When I deploy with truffle all contracts are compiled. When I use web3 is when I see problems occur. I am using web3@^1.0.0-beta.33 and truffle@^4.1.14. When I use web3 and call the setavatar function from UserContract, I get no errors. When I use web3 and call the getter from the ExampleDataStorage contract (in a function like below), I get the default value 0 for uint8 instead of the value I set before.

getAvatarNumber (address) {
    return this.contractHandler.methods.getAvatarNumber(this.UserContractAddress, address).call()
}

I am sure that I am passing in the correct contract addresses in truffle so I have no idea why I am not correctly accessing the data I should be getting. Inside my actual code, I also added a test function inside UserContract that prints out both the ExampleDataStorage and UserContract addresses to make sure I am using the correct addresses when setting and getting. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.